


Pronoia

by RembrandtsWife



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Multi, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Pillow Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 00:43:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8182393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: Why do you fall in love with someone? Or why don't you?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after episode 4x20, "Terra Incognita". I removed the warning for Major Character Death because I have only referenced Carter's death in the previous season. *sob* Thanks to Poetry for encouragement and POI chat.
> 
> I would like to note that Michael Emerson does, in fact, have a low, throaty chuckle that's extremely sexy.

"Tell me about Grace."

Reese didn't look, but he could feel Harold's eyebrows going up. The hand stroking John's hair didn't stop, however.

"I assume you have a good reason, John, for bringing up this topic now." When you're naked in my bed, in my arms, and you've just brought me to orgasm with your mouth, and pleasured yourself against my belly. John could hear the words exactly as Harold would say them, even though he didn't.

"It's not just my kink, no," John allowed, fumbling for Harold's other hand and weaving their fingers together.

Harold sighed, but it sounded like contentment. "The Machine directed me to her. She used to paint often en plein air; I saw her, noticed her, repeatedly, even before the Machine brought her to my attention."

When Harold said no more, John squeezed his hand. "You didn't fall in love with her because the Machine told you to."

Harold's fingers trailed to the back of John's neck; his thumb rubbed the hand laced with his. "I loved looking at the world through her eyes, in her work. She made me see things in a way I wouldn't have seen them, on my own, and it was beautiful."

Harold paused, but John didn't push him. Harold pressed his lips to John's hair for a moment, then went on without prompting. "I have often had occasion to say that it isn't paranoia if they're really out to get you. I first read that in a novel when I was a teenager--Thomas Pynchon's _Gravity's Rainbow_."

"Never read it," John mumbled.

"Perhaps I still have a copy. In any case, Grace taught me that there is an antonym to paranoia, which is pronoia." John heard the smile in Harold's voice. "Pronoia is the belief that the universe is conspiring for your good."

John chuckled. "Doesn't seem like a very realistic philosophy."

"Consider this--" Harold turned toward John and slid down so they were face to face. This close up, his glasses on the nightstand, his eyes were very wide, grey-blue like a calm lake. "I built the Machine out of paranoia, believing, rightly, that terrorists were going to attack my country. Yet the Machine itself functions as an instrument of pronoia. It conspires for our good."

The sight of Harold smiling often made John want to kiss him. Right now was a perfect opportunity to do it, so John did. Harold sighed into the kiss and kneaded at the base of John's neck.

"I was thinking about Joss," John said, having settled back and dragged Harold onto his chest in a reverse of their previous positions. "And about Jessica."

"Because you closed her cold case." Harold yawned. "Oh, excuse me."

"Yeah." John petted Harold's hair. He was not prepared to tell Harold that he had hallucinated Joss being there with him in the car, keeping him going. Or maybe not hallucinated her. Every word the phantom Carter said had rung true to the woman he still missed.

"Jess was beautiful. She was like sunlight. Being around her made me warm, made me smile. She told terrible, stupid jokes and laughed at me for laughing at them. I liked the way she smelled." He took a deep breath. "And I don't know why I loved her."

Harold made a soft noise of objection, protest. John quieted him with a squeeze. "I didn't know her, Harold. When we met, I didn't know myself. Went into the service because my dad did, his dad did, too. Didn't really know what it would mean." That it would turn me into someone who was good for nothing but killing people. Harold would object even more if he said that.

"Even before I went into the CIA, worked with Kara, I could never have told Jess--what I was. Even if I'd been allowed to. I couldn't have gone back to her with the blood on my hands--"

John swallowed against the thickness in his throat. Harold made a soothing noise and petted his hair again.

"Joss knew me. She knew what I was. She knew where I'd been. She was only Army, not special ops, but she knew what it was like out there. She understood why we do what we do. And I could have loved her, Harold. I could have. She could've loved me. Only I didn't let her in. I didn't let myself."

Harold propped himself on one elbow, twisting awkwardly so he could look down at John. "It wouldn't have saved her, John. It would only have made her loss--keener."

His hand lay warm and solid over John's sternum for a moment; then he patted John. "I'll be right back." John watched him creep toward the bathroom, all his scarred back and stiffness exposed; when he came back, he had put on his pyjamas. 

John took his turn in the bathroom and grabbed his t-shirt and boxers off the floor. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he looked down and started laughing.

"What, John?" 

"I never took off my socks."

Harold let out that low, throaty chuckle that John was pretty sure only he ever heard. "How pornographic of you. Shall I turn out the light?"

"Yeah." John swung his legs under the covers and lay down on his side, facing Harold. Harold spent another thirty seconds looking at something on his phone, then set it aside and tugged on the chain that turned off the lamp. 

Harold began snoring almost immediately, a sound like the pages of a book being ruffled. Sirens went by in the night. John lay awake for a little while, listening, wondering what was the password Harold had found to John Reese's soul, the code that had let him in.


End file.
